Solomon Schechter Day School Early Childhood Team Receives the CJEL Innovative Program Award

Early Childhood teachers Julie Wilkins and Robin Werner, received the Commission on Jewish Education & Leadership (CJEL) Innovative Program Award, for their long-term project, Investigation of Trees, with their three-year-old class.

The award was presented at the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford's annual meeting this past Tuesday at Temple Beth Israel in West Hartford. This innovative project grew out of the Reggio Emilia Approach, which enables teachers to develop a curriculum that is inspired by their students' interests. In addition, this project was guided by the Connecticut Preschool Framework's learning objectives and rooted in Jewish tradition.  Solomon Schechter recently received a grant from the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Hartford to integrate the Reggio Emilia Approach into its' Early Childhood program. "We observed children walking by the trees, saying," I love you tree." Teachers then created a variety of experiences for the children to explore trees, including taking nature walks, reading books about different types of trees, doing age-appropriate research, and taking photos of trees.  As a culminating event to their project, the students held a fundraiser to purchase two trees.  One tree was planted on our school campus; the other was planted in Israel.

"This award highlights the vision of our new curricular model," said Early Childhood Director, Michelle Fontaine.  "Our teachers did a wonderful job integrating student interest, Jewish tradition, and learning benchmarks for three year old students into an in-depth unit of study.  We're looking forward to developing new projects in each of our Early Childhood classes again this year."